incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

The Good Place is a half-hour comedy airing on NBC currently; it's eight episodes into a thirteen-episode season and I'm enjoying it very much. Eleanor (Kristen Bell) wakes up in The Good Place where Michael, the architect of that particular neighborhood (Ted Danson), tells her that her deeds as a human rights lawyer won her a rare spot in the desirable afterlife (which most religions get only about 5% right). Except . . . that wasn't her. She's there by mistake.

Fortunately for her, she is also assigned a soulmate, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), who was an ethics professor and who reluctantly agrees to help her so that she isn't sent to The Bad Place.

I really like the way the show keeps complicating things; it's using admirable pacing to unfold a lot of plot and character development in a very compact space -- again, thirteen episodes, which were plotted in full ahead of time (per this interview with creator Michael Schur). Also, it's funny. And as with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Schur's other currently-running show (which I also enjoy greatly), white dudes are in the minority: in fact, there's only one, Michael, among the six main characters (three women; three POC).

Anyway, some very interesting SFF happening here, in a pretty low-commitment form; check it out.